This guy's beating us, babe. I'm not sure how he's doing it, but he is. A wind burst snagged the helicopter, ripping away ten feet of its altitude and making its rotors flex to a dangerous extreme. The old-timers had it easy. If they wanted to impress a lady, all they had to do was to drag some damn old dinosaur back to their cave before dinner-time.
He grinned mirthlessly as he coaxed back the ten feet. It must be getting a little tight if he was turning his own warped sense of humor back on himself.
"On station and going to hover. Down dome to three fifty and resume passive search."
"Down dome to three fifty, aye, sir."
Using the autohover setting of the autopilot was out of the question. In fact, Zero One wasn't hovering at all as much as she was maintaining a forward flight that paced the wind. A very interesting way to make a living.
"Dome down. Commencing passive search."
Arkady fought the control grips and, as the minutes passed, tried to pretend that the turbulence wasn't getting worse.
"Come on, Gus! Let's not take all day about it here!"
"The fucker just isn't out here, sir."
"Repeat the sweep."
The SO leaned forward over his console again, feverishly using his accumulated skill to try to nurse a little more performance out of the system.
"Negative contact… negative contact… neg… Sonovabitch! There he is! Clear as a bell! He's descending out of the surface sound duct. Hull-popping noises and ballast tanks venting, bearing one six zero relative. I can't figure how I could have missed him before."
"To hell with that, Gus. We got 'im now! Go active and get us a range."
"Initiating active pinging… got a return! Target range five thousand yards, still bearing one six oh relative, bearing holding stable."
"Attack sequence!"
"Attack sequence start, sir. Master arm on! Torpedo select, position one! Torpedo is spinning up now!"
"Acknowledged," Arkady clipped back. "Set your preselects. Set fish for active homing. Set initial depth for one five zero. Set snake-pattern acquisition."
"Preselects set."
"Okay, coming around on bearing. We'll take the shot from here."
Arkady tried for a pedal turn and swore savagely as the helicopter fought him, trying to weather-vane back into the wind. From his station in the aft cockpit, Grestovitch continued to call out the track.
"Target is still holding on bearing, no lateral movement noted…. Wait a second, target is moving on vertical axis. He's blowing negative…. Target has gone active…. Target is pinging."
"Come on, you crank-tailed bitch! Get your ass around!"
"Target is changing depth…. Target is reentering surface sound duct…. Target has disappeared, sir."
"Damn!" Arkady let the helo back into the wind. "What happened, Gus?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant." The SO's voice carried his perplexity and frustration. "I had positive locks both active and passive and he just plain-ass disappeared. I'm not getting anything again."
"Did you lose him up in the weather slop?" Arkady demanded.
"I shouldn't have. I was lifting good active returns off of him. I shouldn't have lost the lock."
Arkady had flown with Grestovitch long enough to know that this likely wasn't operator failure. This particular Argentine was stacking the deck somehow.
"Gus, you said that this guy had gone active. Was it his attack system?"
"No, sir. It was a low-powered unit. He only ran a couple of pings off of it. Might have been a fathometer."
A fathometer?
"I've been thinking, Lieutenant," Grestovitch continued. "I heard this guy put a shot of air into his tanks just before he disappeared. Now, figuring that he knows that we've been running radar silent, and granting that he's a real ballsy dude, could he be lying doggo on the surface out there in that fog bank?"
Arkady looked out toward the ragged wall of mist off to starboard. "Yeah. That's how the U-boats used to evade the Brits during the early days of World War Two, back when they had asdic but no surface-search radars. You just may have something, old man. Up dome."
As the sonar transducer clicked into its mount under the Sea Comanche's snub wing, Arkady applied power and began a climbing turn. "Reconfigure for surface search and bring up the APG-65. Scan across the last sonar bearing we had."
"Aye, aye."
Grestovitch called up the radar display on his flatscreens and energized the system, watching intently as the sweep defined the surface.
"Negative! No surface contact. Not even a periscope return. Nothing."
"Damn, Gus. If he's not on top of the water and he's not under it, then where is he?"
"I dunno. There's nothing out there."
His own words suddenly made something click in the SO's mind.
"Hey, there really isn't anything out there."
Intently, Grestovitch ran the brightness gain up and down on his display screen.
"Lieutenant, you've heard guys talk about 'a hole in the water,' haven't you?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm looking at one right now. I'm getting traces of wave return all over the screen, except for right around where that Argy sub should be. There's nothing there at all, just a big dark area on the scope."
"I've never seen a black hole before, Gus. Let's go have us a look."
Retainer Zero One nosed gingerly into the fog bank. "Fog bank" was actually a misnomer, as it was more of a fast-flowing river of sea smoke, driven by the growing winds. Only a few moments' exposure to the wavering, misty streamers flowing around his cockpit made Arkady feel the potentially lethal tug of vertigo. Firmly, he fixed his eyes on his instruments and FLIR display.
"Walk me in, Gus."
"Continue to steer zero four zero true. Range to datum point, five hundred yards. Cross-referencing GPU positioning with datum point… and we're there."
"Okay. Hovering down. Keep your eyes open."
There was already something on the Forward Looking Infrared scanner, but the contrast was poor. As the altimeter steadied at one hundred feet, Arkady risked a look down over the cockpit rail.
White, not fog white, but ice white. They were holding over a great sheet of sea ice, more than half a square mile in area. It lay almost flush with the ocean's surface, riding too low to cause a radar return. But as the storm combers reached the edge of the floe, they collapsed in an explosion of spray and flattened out across its surface, causing Grestovitch's "hole in the water" effect.
"I will be damned. Hey, Gus. Could that funny-sounding ping the Argy produced have come from a vertical-scan sonar?"
"An ice machine? Maybe. But who ever heard of an ice machine on a diesel-electric boat?"
"Maybe the Argentines. This guy could be using it to position himself under this ice pan like a big old bass hiding under a log. Extend the MAD stinger."
Arkady circled wide to come at the floe from downwind, calling the readout from the Magnetic Abnormality Detector up onto his own repeater. Slowly he began to weave over the ice, seeking for a response.
One wasn't long in coming. The sensor pod began to react to the magnetic field being produced by a large mass of ferrous metal.
Arkady tightened the weave, maneuvering slowly until the readings maximized. Returning to a hover, he looked down on the frozen surface of the flow.
"Hello, fishie."
In the Cunningham's Combat Information Center, Vince Arkady's static-spattered voice issued from the radio link speakers. "Gray Lady, Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. We have a solid contact out here, but the setup is a little unusual. Breaking EMCON to request strike assist."
"Retainer Zero One, proceed," Commander Garrett responded coolly from topside.